Felixstowe

Felixstowe still reads as a working port town that happens to have a seafront tacked on: you get the container cranes on the skyline in one direction and Victorian seafront villas in the other, with a retired and semi-retired population filling out the middle years between the two. The median age here sits a full decade above the national figure, and it shows in the pace of the place — this isn't a town organised around young professionals or nightlife-driven weekends, whatever the headline grade for nightlife might suggest.

The practical picture is a mixed one. There's a single rail station serving the town, which tells you commuting out isn't the default reason people live here — this is a place you move to for the town itself, not for a fast run into Ipswich or beyond. Schools are the soft spot in an otherwise solid set of figures: Felixstowe School and the primaries like Grange Community and Langer Primary Academy are rated Good, but the average Ofsted score across the town's eight schools sits close to the national mean rather than above it, and the secondary's progress score is negative — worth sitting with if you've got children heading into their GCSE years. Housing, by contrast, is where the town earns its affordability grade: a median house price around £270,000 is below both the regional figure and the immediate East Suffolk district average, and semi-detached freehold homes dominate the sales record, meaning a typical for-sale board here is advertising outright ownership of an ordinary family house rather than a leasehold flat conversion. Flats in particular sell for notably less than their national counterparts, which suits downsizers more than investors chasing yield.